RSA Student Design Awards 2016/17 Shortlist

Brief was to conceive and produce an animation to accompany a one minute piece of audio that will clarify, energise and illuminate the content. The audio was related to health as a social movement.

Large institutions such as the NHS are slow and bureaucratic, whereas social movements are agile and dynamic and can respond quickly to events. Movement is the main theme here – the action is defined by what is moving. It’s not simply about movement, but the interconnectedness of that movement. Nothing happens alone, representing the need for a holistic approach to healthcare and for all interested parties (everyone) to work together.

This is not your typical animation. The crisis facing our national healthcare system is one that requires us to test and challenge the traditionally accepted rules and instead focus on what we are trying to achieve. This is about bringing ideas to life by bringing objects to life.
 

Peter Cannings Prize 2017 Finalist

This project was created as a response to Ryoji Ikeda's Supersymmetry installation and concepts in quantum mechanics. It explores the boundary between Developers and Designers and questions the evolving role of the Graphic Designer in a world of AI and automation. The brief was to create a series of posters based on a visual system.

Ball bearings roll around a lightbox which is mounted on two servos. A camera mounted above the lightbox is connected to a Raspberry Pi, which is also connected to the servos. Code, written in Python and using the OpenCV computer vision library, calculates the position of the balls and moves the servos to balance the centroid of the eight balls in the centre of the lightbox. It constantly records data about the process.

This data is then represented visually in four different ways, each inspired by a piece of Ikeda's work, to create textures for the backgrounds of the posters. I created a typeface based on a simple grid and encoded each glyph in binary. I then wrote code to draw the glyphs using simple shapes such as circles and squares. A number of variables allow changes to kerning and leading and the appearance of the characters. The posters are created solely by code and based on the data from the robot.